Geopolitical realities at the turn of the century compelled Germany
to allot considerable attention to the Ukrainian question. This attention was
also caused by immediate economic interests and growing strains in their
relationship with Russia.

German policy in Eastern Europe and Ukraine in particular, was
formed in three centers which exerted an essential influence on the German
policy. The Pan-German League and Fatherland Party posited the goal of
defeating the Russian Empire and pushing its borders far to the East. The
Ukrainian movement was considered by them as a factor which could weaken
Russia. The existence of an independent Ukraine was regarded strictly within
the strategy of German eastward expansion. The Pan-Germanists planned German
colonization of Galicia and the Black Sea coast. The second group represented
by journalists and academics, the most prominent among them being Paul
Rohrbach, author of a well-known work, The Non-Russian Peoples of Russia and
Us, favored independence of the Russian Empire's non-Russian nations. Ukraine
was seen as potentially the chief outpost in Eastern Europe against the Russian
expansion to the West. Finally, the third group headed by Prof. Otto
Hörtsch further developed the /220/ Bismarck political line of maintaining
good relations with Russia on the assumption that Russia would remain an
undivided state.1

The Kaiser's entourage and the General Staff maneuvered between the
viewpoints of the Pan-Germanic League and Hortsch's group while the Chancellor
and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were inclined to accept the Rohrbach
group's recommendations. Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg took into consideration,
at the onset of World War I, the possibility of organizing and supporting
revolutionary national movements in tsarist Russia. In his memorandum to the
German ambassador in Vienna he mentioned Germany's intentions to provoke an
uprising in Ukraine and turn Ukraine, Russian Poland, the Baltics, and the
Caucasus into buffer states.

It is characteristic that immediately after signing with Ukraine
the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk the German ambassador in Kyiv von Mumm asked to
send the well-known advocate of the Ukrainian cause Rohrbach to Ukraine. Such a
step was thought to be more useful than direct pressure on the Ukrainian
government through diplomatic or military circles. Rohrbach was expected to
influence indirectly the orientation of Ukrainian politicians since, as noted
by von Mumm, the Central Rada "was deepening the chaos with its communist
experiments to the detriment of our interests."2

The collapse of tsarist Russia speeded up the crystallization of
German policy on Ukraine. Paradoxical as it is, Berlin was inclined to uphold
the principle of national self-determination despite the threat of
ever-increasing national movements on territories under its control.

The Central Powers hoped for a separate peace with Russia, and for
Austria-Hungary, due to its catastrophic condition, such a peace was critical.
At the same time they had to bear in mind the probability of British and French
involvement in the newly-created states. This in turn fact prompted Germany to
coordinate her interests with Russia. German territorial claims against Russian
were minimal and /221/ only touched upon Lithuania and Courland. The Central
Powers intended to define the future destiny of these regions with due regard
of the local population's wishes. Russian Poland (the Congress Kingdom) was
also to become an independent state closely connected with Germany and
Austria-Hungary. Russia was to conclude an immediate peace with the Ukrainian
People's Republic (UNR) and recognize her peace treaty with the Quadruple
Alliance.

Germany's interest in Ukraine rapidly mounted throughout 1917. The
element of duplicity in Germany's Ukrainian policy gradually disappeared.
Official German conditions dated August 19, 1917, specified that, apart from
recognizing a newly-created Polish state, Germany would uphold the right to
sovereignty of Ukraine, Finland, the Baltic provinces, Flanders, Ireland,
Egypt, and Persia.

General outlines of the German plans on Ukraine were drawn up on
October 25, 1917, at the meeting of Chancellor Michaelis with the political
chief of the German Army's High Command General Berthenwarfer. In view of
Ukraine's exceptional economic potential, the army had to support German
industrial interests in Ukraine. It was noted that the separation of Ukraine
from Russia would weaken the latter in all aspects, push it away from the
Balkans and the Black Sea straits and offer Germany a land passage to the Middle
East via the Balkans. The army thus initiated a new German policy toward
Ukraine, and the new Chancellor agreed unequivocally.

It was difficult, however, to apply the new strategy because of all
too rapid political changes in Ukraine.

The minutes of the Brest negotiations show that German
representatives never stressed their rights to military intervention or
economic penetration. The Ukrainian delegation turned to Germany for military
assistance against the Bolsheviks after signing a peace treaty when the Kyiv
government was in obvious crisis. General Hoffmann wrote in his memoirs;
"It was a logical conclusion for me that we could not reject this request.
We had already said A and /222/ now had to say B; we recognized the
Ukrainian government as a legitimate one and concluded peace with it; we
therefore had to make sure that the concluded peace was really implemented, and
this required, above all, support for the government we had made peace with. It
is for this reason that our troops entered Ukraine."3

2. Austro-German Bloc and the Ukrainian Question

Austria-Hungary pursued its Ukrainian policy especially actively
because the Habsburg monarchy ruled Galicia, the Ukrainian Piedmont, and some
politicians in Vienna entertained the hope of annexing Dnipro Ukraine under
favorable conditions.

In November 1914 Austrian Minister of Foreign Affairs Berchtold
noted that "our main objective in this war is the long-term weakening of
Russia, and therefore, if we win, we will set about creating a Ukrainian state
independent from Russia." With this in view, Vienna would support targeted
activities of the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine (SVU).4

Among Austrian politicians expectations of Ukraine's separation of
Ukraine from Russia prevailed from the beginning of the war.5 On the
other hand, there was an uderstanding that the future Ukrainian state must be
truly independent and not governed from Vienna because the monarchy could not
survive the attachment of thirty million new Ukrainians. An idea of
transforming Eastern Galicia into a center of all-Ukrainian cultural
aspirations was being considered, in particular.6

Detailing Vienna's strategic plans, the Austrian consul in Lviv
Urbas noted that it was not in Austria's interests to have a still longer
border with Russia after the war. By occupying Poland, Vienna would have
acquired most of the Russo-German border, which would have increased the
confrontation area of Russia and Austria-Hungary and reduced that of Russia and
Germany. How to avoid such a situation naturally depended on the progress of
war. /223/

The first possibility was to establish an independent Ukraine
between the Dnister and Dnipro which would separate Russia and Austria-Hungary
in its Northern part. The following factors militated against an Austro-Hungarian
protectorate over Ukraine and simultaneous occupation of Poland: 1) the zone of
confrontation with Russia would remain as large as ever; 2) the zone of
confrontation with Romania could double: if Bessarabia were engulfed by
Romania, the latter would become Austria-Hungary's eastern neighbor; 3) the
requisite military effort would be beyond the country's capabilities; 4) it
would be extremely difficult, even, next to impossible to simultaneously play
the Polish and Ukrainian cards because drawing a border between Poland and
Ukraine would be an endless problem.7

Independent Ukraine could not oppose Russia without protection by a
non-Russian force, otherwise it would tend to become a radical socialist
republic, a neighbor Vienna could hardly welcome. An autonomous Ukraine, as the
result of a peace treaty, would have been an illusion if dominated by Russia;
Russia would have continued its traditional Russification or unleash a new war.
This left only three options: a) Ukraine under a German protectorate; b)
Ukraine under a joint Austro-Hungarian and German protectorate; c) personal
union of Ukraine with Romania.

Ukraine under German protectorate would have had the advantage that
the German-Russian border as well as the zone of German-Russian confrontation
would remain large, that Ukrainian socialist tendencies would come under strong
military influence, and that German trade would obtain a convenient and wide
passage to Asia via the Black Sea, which would result in stabilizing the
Balkans.

A personal union of Ukraine with Romania would also have been
acceptable. It would have stopped Romania's expansion to the East and destroyed
its monolithic nature. Romania would also gain a long-term dispute with Russia.

A joint protectorate of Austria-Hungary and Germany over Ukraine
would have been the least desirable thing but /224/ still acceptable as a
last-resort, with Austria setting up the Ukrainian civil administration and
Germany taking upon itself forming its army. In general, to summarize Urbas, a
German protectorate over Ukraine should be favored because Austria-Hungary for
both political and military reasons could not exercise such a protectorate and
simultaneously occupy Poland, and in any case Ukraine would not be viable
without help from a non-Russian force. In case of German refusal, a personal
union with Romania might be proposed.8

Vienna's Ukrainian policy was marked by secrecy: its attitude to
the aspirations of a large European nation for liberation was never made
public. As early as December 1914 the SVU pointed out the need for an official
declaration by the Central Powers to the effect that after the defeat of Russia
they would promote the establishment of a free and independent Ukraine.
"Such declarations made well before the German-Austrian armies enter the
Ukrainian territory and brought to the notice of the Russian public — as with
the well-known Talaat Bey declaration of November 24, 1914 — are sure to be
the best method of Austrian and German propaganda among Russia's Ukrainians.
The SVU, on its part, will do its utmost to promote the spread of agitation
materials in Ukraine through its representatives."9

In August 1915 a memorandum addressed to the Austro-Hungarian High
Command was made public by the All-Ukrainian National Council, which was
closely tied ideologically and politically with the Union for the Liberation of
Ukraine. The authors — K. Levytsky, Ye. Olesnytsky, and L. Tsehelsky
underscored their desire not to separate Western Ukraine from Austria-Hungary
state but, on the contrary, to augment it at the expense of Russian Ukraine.
They urged that Austro-Hungarian forces should not stop at the Bug but should
penetrate to the Dnipro and Black Sea in order to liberate the Ukrainians from
Russian rule and create an autonomous political entity closely bound to the
Central Powers. Further, they argued that the separation of the Baltic
provinces and Poland would no longer be suffi-/225/cient to weaken Russia to
the point where it could no longer threaten the Central Powers. The only way to
weaken Russia was to separate from it all or most of Ukraine.

Circumstances forced the future Ukrainian state to seek guarantees
for its existence exclusively from the Central Powers. There were and could be
no conflict between Ukraine and the Central Powers. In terms of politics and
economics, Ukraine could only gain from the Central Powers. The natural
directions of Ukrainian expansion from time immemorial were to the east and
southeast.

At the same time Ukrainian public figures voiced their concern over
Polish encroachments into Ukrainian lands. The incorporation of Eastern
Galicia, the Kholm region, Volhynia, and Podillia into a future Polish state or
even an autonomous Poland would have been totally unacceptable to Ukrainian
national and political interests as well as inadvisable and even dangerous for
the Central Powers. If ever the choice arose between Russian pressure and an
extremely chauvinistic Polish regime, the oppressed nation would choose the
lesser evil and tend to come to terms with Russia which would become more
flexible after defeat.10

A year later the All-Ukrainian National Council presidium, aware of
the intentions of the Central Powers to finally resolve the Polish problem in
the nearest future, sent its demands to S. Burian, Austrian Minister of Foreign
Affairs. First, official Vienna was notified that no Ukrainian territories
where Ukrainians constitute a majority wished to be joined to Poland. Secondly,
the Ukrainians who resides west of the area of compact Ukrainian settlement and
might be made part of Poland should be granted all the rights of ethnic
minorities. Thirdly, the Ukrainian territories occupied by the armed forces of
the Central Powers, i.e., the Kholm region, Southwestern Grodno,
Southwestern Minsk, and Volhynia, if not made part of an independent Ukrainian
state, should form an autonomous entity closely associated with the Central
Powers.11

Despite loyalist declarations by the Union for the /226/
Liberation of Ukraine and the All-Ukrainian National Council, the Austrian
approach to the idea of an independent Ukraine changes from friendly to cool
and even hostile as the war went on. Official Vienna took a dim view of the
plan to quantitatively increase the Ukrainian Sichovi striltsi legion, forbade
the SVU to conduct national agitation activities among Ukrainian prisoners of
war and gradually reduced assistance to it.12 In January 1915 the
Viennese Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued an instruction on relations with
Ukrainian organizations and ordered the SVU to transfer its headquarters from
Vienna to a neutral country.

But Austria's most unpleasant surprise for Ukrainian organizations
was its plan of establishing a Polish Kingdom incorporating Ukrainian lands.
This clearly showed that Austrian policy-makers accorded the Ukrainian problem
secondary status. As a result, Ukrainian politicians gradually adopted a
pro-German attitude.13

As a consequence of the revolutionary events of 1917, the Ukrainian
question in the eyes of the Central Powers took on a wholly new light. Ukrainian
democracy in Russia opposed the idea of a complete separation of Ukraine from
Russia from the very onset of the revolution referring to it as a "stab in
the back for Russian democracy." Ukrainian politicians did not clearly
define their stand on future Ukrainian borders. A considerable part of the
Ukrainian population favored joint action with the "Motherland,"
especially against the external threat.

In the face of such circumstances, Vienna thought that the best
line for troops entering Ukraine was this: "In these circumstances we are
waging a defensive war and striving for a just peace for all. We do not
interfere in the internal affairs of the neighboring nations; on the contrary,
we give these nations a chance to decide their own fate."14 It
is noteworthy that a Viennese diplomat was giving this kind of advice as early
as August 1917, long before the Brest Peace was signed and the troops of the
Central Powers appeared in the Ukrainian People's Republic. /227/

Also consonant with this position is a memorandum prepared in
August 1917 by the presidium of the Ukrainian Parliamentary Club in the persons
of Yevhen Levytsky and Yevhen Petrushevych. The Austrian deputies from Galicia
wrote that beyond the shadow of a doubt the creation of a Ukrainian state, even
in a federal union with Russia and other new political entities like Finland,
the Caucasus, Turkestan, etc., was in Austria-Hungary's interests because it
would cause Russia to disintegrate into its ethnic and territorial components.
It was also understood that Ukraine would require a certain period of time to
consolidate itself.

Ukrainians wished only that the Central Powers, if they occupied
the above-said territories of an autonomous Ukraine, should recognize the
provisional government in Kyiv and the Ukraine's right to a certain measure of
political home-rule as well as to commit themselves to support Ukrainian
aspirations, keeping in mind their own long-term interests pending the opening
of a peace conference. Ukrainians looked forward to a clear-cut promise that if
the armies of the Central Powers entered Ukrainian territory, they would not
dissolve local bodies of the Kyiv provisional government but rather offer them
real support, strengthen them, and foster their further development.15

Thus, having changed, radically its Ukrainian policy,
Austria-Hungary reached a turning point at the Brest-Litovsk negotiations with
the delegation of the Ukrainian People's Republic and the signing of a
"bread peace" with Ukraine.

The Ukrainian delegation began negotiations in Bres-tLitovsk in
early January 1918, ending in the signing of a peace treaty between the
Ukrainian People's Republic (UNR), on the one hand, and Germany,
Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey, on the other, on the night of February
9, 1918. The Brest Treaty proclaimed an end to the war between the UNR and the
Central Powers. A border was drawn in the West and Northwest of Ukraine. The
problem of prisoners of war was discussed, and economic relations were
regulated. /228/

A secret protocol was also agreed to between the UNR and
Austria-Hungary related to the future destiny of Ukrainian lands in the
Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Vienna promised to introduce in both houses of the
Austrian parliament a bill to establish a Crownland of Eastern Galicia and
Bukovina by July 20, 1918. On its part, the UNR guaranteed legislative rights
to the Polish, German, and Jewish population in the Ukrainian Republic.16

The Ukrainian delegation was to fulfill yet another important task,
obtaining armed assistance from Germany and Austria-Hungary to restore the
authority of the Central Rada. It was decided at the conference of the
top-level German leadership on February 13, 1918, to aid Ukraine as part of the
overall war effort on the Eastern front starting from February 18 after
breaking the cease-fire with Soviet Russia. The Ukrainian representatives were
also to sign an address to the people of Germany and Austria-Hungary to this
effect. As a result, the Ukrainian lands were occupied by 500,000 troops of the
Central Powers and military administration of Berlin and Vienna, while Ukraine
was divided into spheres of influence.

After World War I and the Ukrainian-German rapprochement in 1918,
German interest in Ukraine literally exploded. Universities and specialized
research institutions began to attach great importance to Ukrainian studies.
Nor could the then newly fashionable discipline of geopolitics overlook
Ukraine. Various concepts of German policy toward Ukraine were elaborated,
primarily on the basis of the experience of German-Ukrainian relations at the
end of World War I. Ukraine was regarded as a potentially powerful independent
nation, should it be reassembled from the four parts into which it had been
partitioned in 1919-1920, capable of exerting great influence on the future
balance of power in Eastern Europe.

But these concepts failed to influence German Realpolitik. During
the Weimar Republic, the German government sought to have the best possible
relationship with /229/ Moscow. That automatically excluded playing the
Ukrainian card. For Hitler, Ukraine was not a separate agent in politics, only
part of a much greater political game. Therefore, while the number of research
institutions studying the East considerably increased, they could not define the
direction of the country's political strategy. As in any totalitarian state,
only the Nazi leader's views and intent carried weight.

3. Hitler's Concept of Lebensraum and Ukraine

As Hitler formulated it in Mein Kampf, the main objective of Nazi
German foreign policy was to win more Lebensraum (living space) for the Germans
as a racially superior people. Hitler announced: "To be sure, this
territorial policy cannot be carried out in Cameroon but only in Europe...
Therefore, the unique opportunity for Germany to pursue a sound territorial
policy lies only in winning new lands in Europe itself... It should be clearly
understood that this objective can be achieved only by means of war...17
But if we today speak of new lands in Europe, we can have in mind above all
only Russia and its subject border states."18 By the latter the
Nazi Ftthrer meant the USSR's western republics, including Ukraine.

Hitler did not have any special plans for Ukraine, which he viewed
only as a part of a huge space up to the Urals, which Germany had to conquer
from the Soviet Union. Of course, this is not to say that Hitler unaware of
Ukraine and its importance.

In his address to a massive yearly party conference of Nazis in
Nuremberg in September 1936, he declared, "If we had at our disposal the
colossal raw materials of the Urals, Siberian forests, and the limitless
fertile plains of Ukraine were within the boundaries of Germany — we would
have everything."19

Disclosing his intention to attack the USSR as soon as possible to
the High Command on July 21, 1940, Hitler remarked in passing: "Political
aims: a Ukrainian state, a /230/ Baltic federation, and Belarus..." Ten
days later, speaking before the same audience, he said something quite
different: "In the final analysis: Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic states
should go to us."20 The former statement reiterated a then
widely held view among German students of geopolitics that in order to weaken
Russia, Ukraine should be separated from it and transformed into an independent
state oriented toward Germany and serving as a counterweight to Russia. The
latter statement reflected just the concept of gaining Lebensraum in the East.

This confusion was repeated in early 1941, when preparations for
the German attack on the USSR were in full swing. The High Command was then
working out the "General Instructions on Special Matters Related to the
Directive No. 21 (Plan Barbarossa)." A special issue was future policy on
the occupied Soviet territory. Hitler's instructions included, among other
things, the following: "The future campaign will be not just an armed
struggle. It will also be a clash of two ideologies. In order to bring the new
war to a victorious end, it is not sufficient to occupy the territory and
defeat the enemy's armed forces. The whole territory must be dissected into a
number of states with their own governments, with which we could make
peace."21

That was not what he actually had in mind — even in the
noncommunist West, where by that time Germany had already defeated and occupied
six countries, none of them was offered a peace treaty. Hitler postponed
peacemaking until final victory in order to be in a position to reshuffle all
of Europe and its colonies in accordance with his imperialist and racist ideas.
Moreover, he did not need any state with its own government in the East, on the
territory of the USSR, where the population slated for a fate very different
from that of Western Europe. In the East "Our tasis to build, as fast as
possible and with minimum of armed forces involved, socialist state formations
dependent on us. The task is so difficult that it cannot be left to the
Army."22

One can judge the essence of tasks of the Nazis policy /231/
from other instructions: "...the Judeo-Bolshevik intelligentsia ... must
be removed," i.e., exterminated. Hitler did not know that after the
Bolsheviks there was hardly anything left of the local intelligentsia. The
"socialist state formations" which Hitler had in mind meant that the
subjugated population of the East would be, as under the Bolsheviks, absolutely
without any legal rights, and all power and large-scale property would belong
to the invaders.

On April 2, 1941, Alfred Rosenberg, the main Nazi authority on
national and ethnic problems in the USSR, who was appointed by Hitler as his
"representative on a centralized solution of problems of the East-European
space," submitted the "Memorandum No. 1" to the Führer. In
it he analyzed the state of affairs and made recommendations for future policy
in various of the Soviet territories to be occupied by Germany.

Unlike Hitler, in foreign policy matters Rosenberg, although he was
an official Nazi ideologist and always favored the annihilation of bolshevism
by military means, held not so much extremist as traditional imperialist views.
In contrast to the Führer's vision of a colossal new German Lebensraum in
the East, he rather saw there in the future a new balance of forces which he
hoped to align in a way most advantageous to Germany and ensure German
domination without radical ethnic cleansing, leaving the population where it
was. In the section about Ukraine, Rosenberg wrote:"Ukraine (Borderland
Region): Kyiv was the main center of a Varangian state, with a Nordic ruling
class. But even after the Tartar conquest, Kiev for a long time served as a
polar opposite to Moscow. Its inner national life was based on virtually
independent traditions which had arisen on its own, contrary to claims of
Muscovy historiography, which has predominated in European scholarship.

[Our] political task with respect to this region should be to
encourage the striving for national independence, up to the formation of an
independent state, which would be assigned, alone or in association with the
Don region and /232/ the Caucasus in the form of a Black Sea Union, to curb
constantly Moscow and to safeguard the Eastern borders of the Greater German
Lebensraum. And economically, this region should simultaneously become a
powerful source of raw materials and additional food supplies for the Greater
German Reich.

To that part, which is regarded in the USSR as purely Ukrainian, it
would be necessary to add borderline strips from the indigenous Russian area
... in order to weaken [it] and, at the same time, to have a permanent
counterbalance against it. (Here parts of Kursk and Voronezh administrative
regions are referred to).

Achieving this political goal would require directing the
administrative and economic organization of the whole [Ukrainian] region."23

The Rosenberg plan envisaged no changes in the ethnic composition
of the Eastern territories, except for the Baltic states. Its main thrust was
to weaken and isolate Russia which he hated and feared; hence, the Rosenberg
plan was to encircle Great Russia with a belt of nation states dependent on
Germany and hostile to Russia. Ukraine was to be one of them. It was the
greatest among them, therefore it demanded the greatest attention.

Similar views were also held by some other influential German
officials, especially among the top military leadership who remembered well
German Army's temporary stay in Ukraine in 1918 at the request of the Ukrainian
Central Rada. But these views differed from Hitler's plans and were to yield no
results. Führer rejected the Rosenberg proposal

On April 25, 1941, Rosenberg completed his work on "Memorandum
No. 2." The plan detailed in it was completely in line with Hitler's
instructions. It envisaged creating colonial satrapies in the form of German
Reichskomissariats: Ostland (the Baltic states and Belarus), Ukraine, Muscovy,
and the Caucasus) on occupied Soviet territory. Under this plan, Ukraine was to
extend as far as the Volga river, in-/233/cluding the territory of the
Autonomous Republic of the Volga Germans.24 This plan, as
Rosenberg's other proposals, remained only on the paper.

Addressing to his subordinates a secret report in January 1941, SS
Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler emphasized that "the major objective of
the war against the Soviet Union is extermination of 30 million Slavs."25
On May 2, the Ost Economic Headquarters approved following principles of the
German economic policy on occupied Soviet territory: "1. The war can be
fought only under the condition that ... all German Armed Forces will be fully
provided at the expense of Russia. 2. When we have taken everything what we
need from the country, tens of millions of people will undoubtedly starve to
death."26 Referring to Russia, the Nazis meant the USSR, but
when they mentioned provisions for their army, they had Ukraine in mind.

On July 16, 1941, Hitler had all the Nazi top officials assembled
for instructions on occupation policy. He noted: ... we will emphasize once
again that we had to occupy this or that region, to govern it, and to put
everything in order there; it is in the interests of the population that we ensure
order, regular food supply, transportation, etc. — that is why we
resort to necessary measures. No one should be able to grow aware that we are
beginning the Final Solution! Despite this, we are in a position!" Hitler
added a few words about the Ukraine: "Antonescu wants to have Bessarabia
and Odesa with a strip of land to the westsouth-west of Odesa". He made it
clear that the Romanian dictator would get what he wanted.

"Generally," Hitler noted, "we face the task of
cutting a giant pie in accordance with our needs, so that we can first
assimilate it, second manage it; and third exploit it." "The main
principles are: The formation of a military state west of the Urals must never
again be possible, even if we have to fight, a hundred years to achieve this
goal. The Reich will be safe only when there are no alien armed forces west of
the Urals; Germany commits itself to safeguarding this space /234/ from all
possible hazards... Only Germans have the right to bear arms, but not Slavs,
neither Czechs, Cossacks, nor Ukrainians."27

This differed from Rosenberg's somewhat pro-Ukrainian line, who
emphasized that, in his opinion, in every Komissariat there should be a
different attitude toward its population: "In Ukraine, we should begin
with matters of culture; we should awaken the historical consciousness of
Ukrainians, found a university in Kiev, etc." This was disputed by
Guring, who maintained that in Ukraine the Germans first of all should think
about how we can get maximum provisions from it." Rosenberg replied,
"in Ukraine we should also encourage certain aspirations for
independence."

When Hitler repeated that "the Reich's territory should
encompass the Crimea, including a sizable adjacent area (north of the Crimea);
this adjoining territory must be enveloped by as great a territory as
possible," "Rosenberg voiced his fear for the Ukrainians living
there." Rosenberg's position put Martin Bormann on his guard: "It
would turn out several times that Rosenberg had attached too much attention to
Ukrainians; he wants to enlarge considerably the old Ukraine."

Rosenberg's efforts failed. His candidate for the position of the
Nazi governor-general in Ukraine was rejected. At Guring's suggestion, Hitler
appointed Erich Koch, Gauleiter of East Prussia, Reichskomissar of Ukraine.

Koch was the personification of the most brutal form of Nazi
dictatorship.28 In his talks with his subordinates, he used to point
out that the lot of Ukrainians was to be the slaves of Germans, "white
Negroes," and that all those who were even a potential threat to the
invaders' domination in Ukraine would be subject to physical extermination. The
central place among the forces hostile to occupation troops was relegated by
Koch, as by Hitler himself, to the national intelligentsia; therefore, it was
to be the first to be exterminated, and if the victims happened to be
comparatively not /235/ too many, that was only due to the fact that Moscow
had already done the job.

Hitler's satrap did not conceal his views; but then they could not
be hidden, for they were carried out in specific open actions by the occupation
authorities. Koch's public pronouncements before the Germans to the effect that
there would be no Ukraine whatsoever, merely a German colony, that the knout
was the most necessary instrument for governing it, and that Ukrainians were
Untermenschen (subhumans) did not take long to become widely known. Koch
resolutely rejected the idea of forming even some sort of pseudo-political body
composed of local public figures, as was the case in Reichskommissariat Ostland
(the Baltic states and Belarus). He once said that should he happen to come
across a Ukrainian, worthy of sitting at the same dinner table with him, he
would immediately order him shot.

The Koch administration plundered and tortured occupied Ukraine,
but the Soviet authorities did not demand his extradition to have him brought
before the court for his crimes against the Ukrainian people. One can venture a
justified guess that it was a sort of solidarity. By his politics Koch exacerbated
to the utmost relations between the Germans and Ukrainians. Hence, he did
precisely what Stalin needed done and what the latter ordered Soviet partisans
to do when they inflicted damage to the Germans in order to provoke retaliation
against the Ukrainian peasantry.

Stalin well understood how before the war the Ukrainian villagers
had viewed his power with its artificial "collectivization famines,"
forced labor in collective farms, and ten-year prison sentences for several
wheat ears gleaned after the harvest in order to assuage hunger. He also knew
too well that "German quotas" — obligatory food supplies taxes
levied on every homestead — were twice as low as those imposed by the Soviet
regime. Under the Germans, the Ukrainian village was more well-to-do than
before the war. Military actions of "people's avengers," i.e., partisans,
/236/ who, in fact, never defended the local population from the invaders,
were intended to swing the feelings of the countryfolk in Stalin's favor.
Stalin's vile strategy, realized by the Ukrainian Headquarters of the Partisan
Movement, achieved its toll: hundreds of Ukrainian villages burned to the
ground by the Germans and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian dead

Ukraine was in turn bloodied and depopulated in turn by the two
totalitarian monsters, red and brown. The typological similarity of these
totalitarian dictatorships constituted the basis of their inhuman cooperation.
At a conference on July 16, 1941, Hitler said: "The Russians have now
issued an order on guerrilla warfare in our rear. These partisan actions are
also of some use for us: they make it possible for us to kill anybody..."29

4. General Plan Ost

The implementation of the sweeping program of ethnocide, launched
just after the defeat and occupation of Poland, was to reach its apex of mass
annihilation of people in the Eastern territories. On October 7, 1939, Hitler
signed a decree on consolidating the German nation. Specifically, it provided
for resettling German citizens and Volksdeutsche from foreign countries,
setting up new German colonies, and creating a new German peasantry.30
This decree began the series of the previously mentioned and various other
inhumanely atrocious directives and orders, and their implementation became the
essence of the German policy in occupied Ukraine. It created and put into
operation mechanisms to depopulate the Eastern territories from killing
hostages to the gas chambers of the "death factories."

Entertaining a scheme of gaining new immense territories in the
East, Hitler regarded them as a space for enlarging the German rural
population, which, he believed, was the most valuable part of the nation. This
is why the strengthening of the German nation was considered to de-/237/pend
on the numerical growth of the German countryfolk, but not in Germany where
spare land was scarce or practically nonexistent. Ukraine was always viewed in
Germany as an ideal region for agriculture. Therefore, it could not but become
an object of primary importance in the future Nazi policy of Germanizing the
East. This spelled extreme danger for the people of Ukraine.31

Appointed Reichskomissar for consolidating the German nation,
Heinrich Himmler immediately established, also in the SS system, the
corresponding Reichskomissariat. Its planning division began to work out plans
to Germanize the East. Soon afterwards it became known as General Plan Ost
(East). It was precisely this plan that formed the basis of the political
doctrine of Germanizing the Slavic lands.

The main thrust of the plan was that most of the Slavic population
was to be deported to the Siberia, space thus vacated place to be resettled by
Germans and closely related Germanic peoples. Only certain fragments of Master
Plan Ost are now known. Specifically, it mentions Galicia, from which 65% of
the local population was to be deported.32

The first stage of the plan's implementation was scheduled for
twenty-five to thirty years after the war. During this period, a network of
"marks," colonies of German settlers, as to be established on the
vast expanses of the European USSR. Alongside them, economic-administrative and
military strong points, built anew only for Germans at intersections of
strategic routes, were to arise. Germans would not settle in Ukrainian towns,
resulting in the latter's degradation and come ruin. The number of German
"marks" would increases, their network grow denser and, finally, they
were to merge, covering the whole territory of Ukraine.33 Only the
territory, but the population, was slated for Germanization.

In his evening table talk, which were recorded, Hitler most often
mentioned Ukraine. Soon after the Smolensk conference, he said, "We will
take the southern part of Ukraine, first of all the Crimea, and turn it into an
exclu-/238/sively German colony. It will not be difficult to drive the local
population away." But this was to be only the beginning of Ukraine's
colonization. "In a hundred years, millions of German farmers will live
there... 130 million people in the Reich, and 90 million in Ukraine."34
Ukraine's economic resources drove him ecstatic. "Where else is there a
region capable of yielding iron which could equal Ukraine one in quality?..
Ukraine has manganese which is sought after even by America. And so many other
prospects besides!"35

The Nazis did not await the war's end to begin Ukraine's
Germanization. Establishing agricultural estates for the SS officers was its
first form. Very suggestive of the lot of the local population is the fact that
the position of the general manager of the estates was given in July 1942 to O.
Pohl, the superintendent of Hitler's whole system of concentration camps, which
was also a branch of the SS.

It was no accident that the SS officers became the owners of new
estates whose aggregate area on the territory from Ukraine to the Baltic Sea
amounted to 600,000 hectares,36 for from the beginning to the very
end the whole matter of Germanizing occupied lands was the sole' responsibility
of the SS. Holding privileged positions in the state structure of Nazi Germany,
the SS wanted to take the best part of the loot which fell into the hands of
the armed forces, and paid no heed to the appetites of Wehrmacht (Army)
colleagues. Tales of the future enrichment of German soldiers and officers at
the expense of seized Soviet lands was one of the main features of fascist
propaganda. Meanwhile, the SS officers received estates, trying to capture as
much as possible. In the long run, it reached such a scale that on October 26,
1942, Himmler had to issue a circular saying that some of his subordinates had
lost any sense of proportion in acquiring property in the East.37

As early as 1942, the first steps were made to implement the main
idea of the General Plan Ost. In July 1942, in connection with the fact that
the center of gravity of the military operations had shifted to the southern
wing of the /239/ Soviet-German front, Hitler's Field Headquarters were
relocated to the outskirts of Vinnytsia; Ukrainians had to be evicted, and
Himmler ordered 10,000 Germans resettled in their place.38

On October 15, the zone of total deportation was extended, by
Reichskomissar of Ukraine Erich Koch's order, to the southern parts of the
adjacent Zhytomyr region. Here it covered up to sixty localities.39
The whole zone was referred to as Hegewald ("forest reserve"). On
December 12, after the operation had been practically completed, Koch issued an
order on establishing the Hegewald German resettlement district with an area of
500 square kilometers and a population of 9,000.40 In accordance
with General Plan Ost, the district was excluded from the sphere of authority
of the Reichskomissariat of Ukraine and transferred to SS jurisdiction bodies.41

Nazi planners worked out the doctrine of Germanizing the East in
the situation when the course of the war betokened their victory. But as early
as November 1942 event occurred events which pointed to quite a different
outcome.

A radical change took place in the course of the Soviet-German war
where the major forces of two hostile world coalitions fought. In April, Hitler
ordered a halt to General Plan Ost, which, as did all other aspects of German
policy of that period in the East, had brought terrible suffering and
devastation to Ukraine.

5. German Policy Toward the Organization of Ukrainian
Nationalists

When preparing for an attack on the USSR, the Nazis first planned
to make use of Ukrainian nationalists. The latter, in their turn, agreed to
collaborate, having believed the assurances by German state officials that
Germany would assist in restoring a Ukrainian independent conciliar state.42
At that moment, the nationalists could not find any other outside force
which would help the Ukrainian people to re-/240/instate their own
statehood. In doing so, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) pursued
its own independent line and tried to influence German policy regarding
Ukraine.

In June 30, 1941 in Lviv, the Act of Restoration of the Ukrainian
State was proclaimed, in compliance with the "Resolution No. 1 of the
National Assembly of Ukrainians", in the presence of German authorities.
Specifically, the document ran: "The Revived Ukrainian State will closely
cooperate with National-Socialist Great Germany, which under the guidance of
Adolph Hitler is establishing the new order in Europe and the whole world, and
is rendering assistance to the Ukrainian people in liberating themselves from
the occupation by Muscovy, The Ukrainian National Revolutionary Army, to be
formed on the Ukrainian soil, will further fight, along with the Allied German
army, against the occupation by Muscovy, for the sovereign conciliar Ukrainian
State and the new order in the whole world."43

But very soon afterwards, Ukrainian Nationalists were to be
disillusioned: their expectations for Germari assistance in reviving an
independent Ukraine came to be shattered. After the OUN leadership had refused
to revoke the Act of June 30, 1941, reprisals of the Nazi punitive system were
launched against members of the OUN. Soviet secret agencies gave the following
evidence of the reprisals:" Despite the fact that for several years the
German top leadership had been promising the OUN leadership to realize the
major clause of their "program", the Nazi military authorities did
not hesitate to take severe measures in order to discontinue the activities of
Ukrainian Nationalists directed toward creating an "Independent
Ukraine", arrested S.Bandera, the OUN leader, drove other OUN leaders away
from Ukraine, and prohibited the local Nazi Administration to enlist the
services of S. Bandera's people for fighting partisans, having declared them
"personae non gratae."44

It should be noted that the Nazi High Command not /241/ only
took drastic measures to terminate the activities of mobile OUN task groups,
which were organizing the Ukrainian local governing bodies on the occupied
territory (specifically, they halted in Vasylkiv near Kyiv and sent back a
group which was to proclaim in Kyiv the restoration of independent Ukraine),
but also began to recall from Ukraine those German officers who supported Ukrainian
Nationalists in this. In particular, it was just the case with Professor Koch,
the special Reich representative in the Süd Army group, who, as was
admitted by the Reichskomissar of Ukraine on September 20, 1941,
"supported Ukrainian aspirations for creating an independent state to a
measure which not only was politically unreasonable, but ran counter German
interests". Specifically, Profes sor Koch approved of the establishing of
the Ukrainian Council of Accredited Representatives in Volhyn' that assumed
powers, nearly equal to those of the Reich's government. For example, this
Council would appoint heads of Ukrainian administrations in all
administrative-territorial units from oblast's (regions) to small rural
districts, establish Ukrainian courts and appoint judges, and, besides, issue
various orders and instructions to Ukrainian authorities.45

A dispatch sent by Saburov, a Soviet partisan commander, bears the
following testimony: "When the Nazis had gone back on their earlier
promise to S.Bandera's people to help form an "independent Ukraine"
and began to arrest them, the latter went underground. Bandera's people
directed all their efforts to form reserves for organizing the "Ukrainian
National Army". In this, they relied on Ukrainian police superintendants,
commanders of Ukrainian military units (formed earlier by Germans),
burgomasters, village headmen and teachers, in order to influence, through
their offices, their subordinates and entourage. As a result, the police and
Cossacks turned into the main channel of forming and arming the nationalist
Bandera detachments.

S. Bandera's people set for themselves the aim of taking advantage
of the Red and German Armies' being rendered /242/ inefficient at the fronts
and raising a revolt (or, as they call it, "revolution") in order to
capture towns and big railroad junctions by force and to proclaim an
"independent Ukraine."46 Indeed, such an anti-Nazi
uprising, initiated by the OUN, did take place in spring 1943, when all the
Ukrainian police force overnight joined the ranks of the Ukrainian Insurgent
Army (UIA), waging an armed struggle against German invaders in order to
establish a Ukrainian state on the ethnic Ukrainian territory.

At present, the exact number of Nazis killed in actions against the
UIA is not yet known.47 Likewise, the data on the number of
Ukrainian "collaborators" killed in actions against the Nazis remain
unprecise. Formerly secret archives now made accessible to the general public
contain documents revealing that there were hundreds of armed battles and
clashes of the UIA and the Nazis, specifically, in Volhyn' in March-April 1943.48

The Nationalists launched an anti-Nazi military campaign all over
Ukraine. For instance, a dispatch of Savchenko, the People's Commissar of the
State Security of the UkrSSR, dated May 24, 1943, and sent to the name of
Strokach, the chief of the Ukrainian Headquarters of the partisan movement,
read: "A number of our sources and captured documents indicate that,
despite mass German reprisals against members of the OUN, and among S.
Bandera's supporters in particular, the latter, on going underground, have
intensified their activities rather than curtailed them. The OUN has sent its
emissaries to all regions of Ukraine and is setting up clandestine organizations,
centers and legions, is building stores of weapons and ammunition, is equipping
print shops, and is training soldiers and officers for an armed struggle."49

The anti-Nazi struggle of Ukrainian Nationalists was extended
beyond the borders of the UkrSSR onto other ethnic Ukrainian territories, and
further, onto the Third Reich's territory itself. Especially active fightings
were in the regions of Berestove, Pinsk, Kholm, and in the Sian river area.
/243/ This is definitely evidenced by documents of the People's Commissariat
in Internal Affairs of the UkrSSR50 and those of Germans,51
specifically, the ones about arrests of large groups of S.Banders's people in
Braunschweig, Dresden, Leipzig, Berlin, Hannover, Munich, Vienna, Prague,
Breslau, Danzig, Bremen, Hoemnitz, Dusseldorf, etc.52

6. Ostpolitic FRG in 1949-1989 and Ukraine

In the 1950s, West Germany's major foreign policy concern was
"face-lifting", i.e. improving the Bundesrepublik's image in Europe.
In the situation of the divided German nation and the harsh Cold War
confrontation, the "Western vector" of the FRG's foreign policy was a
top conceptual priority. The "Eastern vector" served the needs of
confrontation between the USSR and the USA in Europe.

Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's conceptual paradigm presupposed West
Germany's integration into Western economic, political, and military
structures. After the FRG had joined NATO and the Warsaw Pact had been formed,
during Adenauer's visit to Moscow in September 1955 the FRG established
diplomatic relations with the USSR. Political circles and public opinion in the
FRG considered the USSR a military superpower; therefore, Bonn's real policy
regarding the USSR was conceptually concentrated on Moscow. The Ukrainian, as
well as other Union Republics, were not taken into account. In such a
historical situation any other approach would only have been Utopian. The
assassination of Stepan Bandera, the émigré Ukrainian nationalist
leader on October 15, 1959 in Munich for some time aggravated relation between
the FRG and the USSR, but it could not provoke a "conceptual
revolution" in West Germany's attitude toward Ukraine's independence, for
at that time Nikita Khrushchev's ultimatum on the status of West Berlin and the
acute "Berlin crisis" were more pressing foreign policy problems for
Bonn. Ukraine's cooperation with the German /244/ Democratic Republic
proceeded only in the framework of relations of the "first German
socialist state" with the Soviet Union.

In 1957 the FRG signed the Rome Treaty on the European Economic
Community. Willy Brandt noted that "Germany comes back to itself and the
creative forces of its history through Europe". Jean Monnais, one of the
"founding fathers" of integrated Europe believed that a deeper West
European integration could be for Germans in the FRG a sort of substitute for
their national unity.

Clear signs of the FRG's renunciation of its "cold peace"
with the USSR appeared in West Germany's foreign policy only after the
"grand coalition" of the CDU, CSU and SDPG had come to power in Bonn
in 1966. Chancellor Brandt defined the paradigm of "a new Eastern
policy" in his memoirs in the following way: "Opening with our own
German key the door leading to détente, and putting an end to Germany's
division." The Moscow Treaty, signed on August 12, 1970, laid down the
foundation of the post-confrontation period in relations between the USSR and
the FRG. In the historical perspective, this treaty knocked out the first stone
from the Berlin Wall.

7. Independent Ukraine in the Foreign Policy of Reunified
Germany

A new historical opportunity for achieving the strategic national
objective, reunification of two Germanys by peaceful means, arose for the
Federal Republic of Germany. This FRG goal determined its strategy and tactics
toward the Soviet Union. While the USSR disintegrated and Germany was in the
process of reunification, the main thing for Bonn was to avoid irritating
Moscow by making advances to the national independence movements, which were
gaining momentum in the republics. This is why Germany had a very moderate and
cautious attitude toward the conceptual clarification of its position regarding
the independent states /245/ which formed after the USSR's collapse.

The place of independent Ukraine in reunified Germany's foreign policy
doctrine can be defined in analyzing the FRG's strategic policy objectives
toward Central and Eastern Europe as well as Russia.

In the early 1990s, the paradigm of foreign policy of the Federal
Republic of Germany, that was shaped and realized during 1949-1989, underwent
transformation. American political scientist H. Guypel maintains that in the
Cold War period the basis ot the FRG's foreign policy conception was formed by
the paradigm of "idealism and orientation toward balancing."53
Under the conditions of historic changes in Europe in 1990, Hans Genscher, then
FRG Foreign Minister, defined a new conceptual paradigm in the following way:
"We seek dynamism in stability."54 It was just this
conceptual approach that determined the position of the FRG in the situation of
geopolitical transformations in the early 1990s. Being open to various
alternatives in the new historical situation, which succeeded the Cold War era
stability, facilitated transformations in both Eastern and Western Europe.
National interests urged Germany to an active conceptual elaboration of a new
policy toward the USSR and East European countries rather than to an escape to
the umbrella of Western institutions. On October 3, 1990, Germany again became
a single unified nation. "A great power" with its global foreign
policy interests has emerged in the heart of Europe, seeking a new role for
itself on the world arena and having a great vested interest in the East
European region.

The revision of paradigm of the FRG's foreign policy conception is
connected with the problem of strategic choice: either to continue advancing in
the direction of further Europeanization, or to try once again to shape Europe
after the German pattern. A rapid pace of achieving internal unity along with
further work toward European integration remain the strategic goals of unified
Germany. Objectively, the intensification of this process continues to be the
center-/246/ piece of the European direction in unified Germany's foreign
policy: "Establishment of an enduring peaceful order for the whole of
Europe; ascension of Central and East European countries to the European Union,
and an economically sound and politically efficient European Union," said
Germany Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel, "these are the strategic choices of
unified Germany on the threshold of the twenty-first century."55

Independent Ukraine has already assumed, in fact, its own
"niche" in Germany's foreign policy paradigm. The FRG respectfully
accepted the outcome of the December 1, 1991 referendum on Ukraine's
independence. Soon after, on January 17, 1992, Kyiv and Bonn established
diplomatic relations. The Embassy of unified Germany was the first among the
embassies of Western countries established in independent Ukraine.

The Joint Declaration on fundamentals of relations between the
Federal Republic of Germany and Ukraine vividly demonstrated the new conceptual
paradigm of the FRG policy with respect to Ukraine: "The Federal Republic
of Germany and Ukraine... remember ill-fated periods of the recent European
history... and wish to make their contribution to the cause of peace in Europe
and the whole world. This answers the underlying needs of the German and
Ukrainian peoples."56 However, the "Russian factor"
remains essential in German-Ukrainian relations.

Russia inherited from the former USSR a legal basis for further
development of partnership with the FRG up to the year 2010. Ukraine had to
begin from scratch to build up its own legal and agreement basis. In the early
1990s Germany felt obliged to show its gratitude to Russia for the latter's
consent to unification of Germany. At that time the FRG's policy toward Russia
was aimed at ensuring favorable diplomatic conditions for unification,
scheduled withdrawal of the former USSR's troops, and unobstructed access to
Russia's power and mineral resources and raw materials. A geopolitically stable
Russia, with democratic order and with-/247/out poverty and imperial
expansionism, is a conceptual objective of the German policy toward Moscow.

At the same time, Ukraine has not experienced any discrimination
from Bonn. A model of equitable approach to Ukraine and Russia is gradually
forming in Germany's foreign policy doctrine. Generally, unified Germany itself
encourages the process of defining the policy of the European Union regarding
the CIS. "The signing of agreements on partnership and cooperation with
Russia, Ukraine and other countries of the CIS," noted Kinkel, "is of
great importance for us."57 Working out various forms of
cooperation, Ukraine's admission to associate membership in the European Union,
realistic economic assistance, and gradual creation of preconditions for mutual
rapprochement are all elements of the FRG's conceptual approach to Ukraine.
Advances in Ukrainian reforms will increase the potential and priority of
relations with independent Ukraine for the FRG.

The forming of the conceptual basis of the FRG's policy toward
Ukraine is taking place in a complex historical situation. Germany objectively
perceives Ukraine's geopolitical significance for stability in Europe in the
Eurasian context, since Ukrainian independence fixes and renders irreversible
geopolitical changes which occurred in Europe in 19891991.

Ukrainian-German relations have taken on a qualitatively new
character. Germany has emphasized its intention to develop consistently a
relationship of friendship, cooperation, and good-neighborliness. Realism,
pragmatism, and tolerance have become the conceptual principles of the FRG's
policy toward Ukraine.

4 Telegrams in Ziffern des k.u.k. Ministerium des
Aussern an Markgraf Pallavicini in Koustantinopel, Nr. 776. Wien, 20 November
1914, Haus-Hof und Staatsarchiv von Osterreich-Ungarn. Politische Abteilung
(HHStA. PA.) 902 Liasse Kr. 8b. Ausfertigung. The Union for the liberation of
Ukraine (SVU) was established by wellknown Ukrainian figures in early August
1914 to work for an independent Ukrainian state.

5 Austrian consul Urbas was involved in organizing the
volunteer Sichovi Striltsy in Lviv. He attributed his difficulties to the
Ukrainians' backwardness, poverty and inadequate political experience (in
contrast to the Poles). Despite this, however, Urbas considered the Ukrainian
cause far more promising than its Polish counterpart, for, while the Ukrainians
looked to Vienna, not St. Petersburg for independence, the Poles would always
try to play Russia and Austria off against each other. See: Urbas an Hoyos: zur
Bildung eines ukrainischen Freikorps. Frage zur Schaffung eines
selbstandigen polnischen und eines ukrainischen Staates. Lemberg, 6 August
1914, HHStA. P.A. 523 Liasse XLVII/11. Ausfertigung.

17 Before World War I Germany had 539,000 sq. km. of
territory. Hitler hoped to increase this ten-fold, thus gaining for the German
people a vast "living space," Lebensraum, by occupying, first,
contiguous territories and, later, territories contiguous to those previously
occupied.

22 One can judge the character of Nazi ideology from
such phrases as "The Jew-Bolshevik ideology... must be destroyed."
Hitler's "socialist state" foresaw that the indigenous poopulation to
the East of Germany would be, like the Bolsheviks, absolutely without rights with
all power and large-scale property belonging to the occupiers. Ibid.

33 Together with this was the intention to create
economic-administrative and military defensive points, to be built from scratch
for German's only, at strategic junctions. See: Hitler's Secret Conversations,
1941-1944 (New York, 1953), p. 13, 76.

34 Ibid., p. 507.

35 Ibid., p. 45.

36 A. Dallin, op. at, p. 284. German official
data.

37Ibid.

38Ibid., p. 286.

39The Zhytomyr Region During the Temporary
Occupation by German Fascist Aggressors, 1941-1944: A Collection of Documents (Zhytomyr,
1948: in Ukrainian) p. 104 and the map between pp. 104-105; V. Kosyk, Ukraine
During the Second World War, 1938-1945 (Paris-New York-Toronto, 1992: in
Ukrainian) /414/ pp. 272-273.

40 Dallin, op. at, p. 286.

41 Nazi planners worked out the doctrine of Germanizing
the East after their final victory, but already in the period from November
1942 through February 1943 the war took a different course, and in April 1943
Hitler ordered work on plan Ost suspended.

42 For decades the ruling communists were able to sow in
broad cirles of our society the myth of large-scale OUN collaboration with the
Nazi aggressors during World War II, presenting the Ukrainian nationalists to
both their own people and the world at large as traitors, sellouts, and
bastards. Such a view prevailed among segments of the Ukrainian public and was
reinforced by historians, among them foreign ones.

47 According to approximate data presented at a
scholarly conference in Ivano-Frankivsk in April 1995, 10,345 occupiers.

48 TsDAVOVU, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 164, ark. 2-2f, 15-17.

49 TsDAOU, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 227, ark. 22.

50 TsDAOU, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 78, ark. 16-18.

51 TsDAOU, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 227, ark. 31-32.

52 Yet another reason for accusing the Ukrainian
nationalists of collaborationism is that they were allegedly armed by the
Germans. In truth, the UPA had many German weapons, but these were either
obtained in battle with the Germans or exchanged for food. There are countless
examples of such exchanges.

Serious studies of the corresponding documentary sources now
underway will make it possible to fill in many gaps in the history of Ukraine
and to reveal the whole truth about the activities of the OUN-UPA during World
War II. Hopefully, this will give lie to the falsifications fabricated by
communist propaganda about the alleged collaborationism of the Ukrainian
insurgents, who sacrificed many of their lives in the struggle against the
Nazis. TsDAOU: f. 62, op. 1, spr. 254, ark. 16.

53 Gary L Geipel, "Germany and the Burden of
Choice," Current History, November 1995, p. 375.